


After the War

by Sylv



Category: Kingdom Hearts
Genre: Angst, Gen
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2012-12-03
Updated: 2012-12-03
Packaged: 2017-11-20 05:16:36
Rating: General Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 759
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/581680
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/Sylv/pseuds/Sylv
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff">
              <p>Sora tries to adjust to life as a normal kid again.</p>
            </blockquote>





	After the War

_"I'm worried about him,"  
  
_ People would say, watching as he plodded down the street with his two friends whom he had become inseparable with. If he heard them, he laughed, as assurance that their fears were baseless, silly, eve. If he didn't hear them, he would wonder:  
  
Why isn't anyone worried about me?  
  
It was a strange thing, to be in his position. He didn't want any company, save for those two, but they didn't count, they were already a part of him. And yet, when he was alone, he longed for his other friends to come sprinting up to them, shouting something about what they were going to do that afternoon.  
  
Riku and Kairi must have noticed, but if they did, they didn't say anything about it. Maybe they knew how he felt; he doubted it, though. They might have changed as well, but they couldn't know. Not like he did. Besides, they each had their own kind of pain that they had to deal with.  
  
 _He would see Yuffie. She would bounce over to him like she always did, and bend down so that she was eye level wih him. She would frown, tuck a strand of hair behind her ear and say, "Hey, Sora..."  
  
And he would say, "Please don't, Yuffie," and roll over so that his back was facing her as he lay in the sand.  
  
_It was like he couldn't settle-- he wanted to go to the beach; no, he wanted to go to the cafe and get some sea salt ice cream; actually, he wanted to go lay blitzball with Tidus and Wakka; but he wanted to go to the island with Riku and Kairi-- and because he couldn't settle, he didn't.  
  
One o'clock, two o'clock, three o'clock, and he would count the hours that he lay in bed where nothing would go through his mind. If he bothered to think, he would probably think about the other worlds and the King and his friends and everything that he had done up until then, but he wasn't thinking, so he didn't.  
  
If they somehow breached the subject in passing, one of them would immediately change the topic of conversation. "So, in all the time that we were separated..." Kairi would begin, but then Riku would lay back and close his eyes, and Sora would jump up and say that he was going to walk along the water alone, and she would bite her lip.  
  
He was happy, but he wasn't happy; ther was contentment, and yet, it wasn't enough. Sor asometimes felt hot flashes of anger course through him-- because he used to be okay with all of this, because this used to be all that he needed, because he hated needing anything else, because he knew that  _things could never be the same as they were_.  
  
He didn't even know when it had happened, or how, but he registered that it had. It was uncomfortable, unwanted, and he didn't think that he ahd ever hated complacency as much as he did just then, just now, now after everything was supposed to be done, finished, through.  
  
 _He would see Selphie. She would giggle and chatter and ask him questions that he would answer with monosyllables, because he realized that there were other places he really wanted to be right then. And she would pause and glance at him and go, "You know, you never used to be like this..."  
  
And he would reply with, "I know," because it was true and he wasn't going to start lying to her now.  
  
_He had never been one to look at the past with regret, but there were times when he started down the road of 'what if' and he pondered over how things would have happened if they had gone differently. He didn't share these thoughts with Kairi and Riku; they wouldn't say what he wanted to hear anyway, because he realized that no one had the words.  
  
Every once in a while, Sora wondered if this wasn't him at all; if this was Roxas thinking and Roxas acting and Roxas spilling over when he shouldn't be. Then Sora realized that it wouldn't matter if it was; Roxas was one half of him, and therefore, was him.  
  
So he was himself all along.  
  
 _Are they worried about me? Why aren't they worried about me?  
  
_ They couldn't see. They didn't know. And he wasn't sure how to figure this out on his own.  
  
 _(But he could pretend.)_  
  
And if he said nothing, then neither would they.


End file.
